Jaya inflicts injury; states DMK spent Rs 5000 cr on polls

Chennai, Aug 25: Embarking on a witch-hunt of sorts on leaders in the DMK camp, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has completed 100 days in office in what can be termed as her most dramatic period in office. Inflicting further injury to the tainted DMK regime, Jayalalithaa commented that the DMK had pumped in Rs 5,000 crore for the Apr 13 Tamil Nadu elections.

In a speech delivered to mark her 100 days in office, she said, "The DMK was heavily dependent on money power rather than muscle power or others. Do you know how much money they pumped in for the elections? Rs 5000 crore."

On money power playing a major part in the country's elections, Jayalalithaa commented on the strict measures undertaken by the Election Commission to curb this trend. She said that Rs 50 crore was seized already. She added, "I came to know that some DMK men said they were not bothered by it as it was like little water spilling out of a pot full of water."

In an attempt to inflict more damages to the DMK, Jayalalithaa indirectly implied that Union minister M K Alagiri was behind pumping this money. Slamming the huge influx of money in to the elections, she declared that the DMK had to suffer a crushing defeat in spite of this. She commented that with this, the voters had given the mandate to the AIADMK and put her in the seat of power with a strength of 200 MLAs in the 234-member assembly.

Immediately after assuming power, Jayalalithaa scrapped all the pet DMK projects. Notable among them was the news of the Rs 1,200 crore new secretariat-assembly complex being converted into a multi-speciality hospital. The new assembly complex was the dream project of the DMK regime. The other projects which were scrapped were the free colour TV distribution scheme that was an election promise.